The deadline for the Google Lunar XPrize has again been pushed back, this time to March 31, 2018. After over 10 years and multiple deadline extensions, it is hoped that this is the final delay for what has undeniably been an ambitious competition to get the first privately funded spacecraft onto the Moon.

Asteroids whizz past Earth on a regular basis, and thankfully they’re usually only a few meters wide. But next month we’re due for a close encounter with a monster space rock measuring 4.4 km (2.7 mi) across, making it the largest near-Earth object (NEO) to come this close to the planet since NASA began tracking them almost 20 years ago.

You’ve seen the sport if you’ve ever watched the Olympics. That’s how Bobby Iadanza got into it.

“My dad’s a contractor,” he said. “When I told him about curling, he said, ‘it’s a perfect sport for you, because no one is better with a broom than you.’”

All curlers know, it looks kind of goofy. And it’s hard to explain.

“I have curly hair. So when I tell people I’m a curler, they say, ‘but you already have curly hair,’” said Dafna Stemple. “Or they think it’s weight curling. But I tell them it’s like shuffleboard on ice, with physics.”

Physics. Well yeah – that’s a cold, hard fact.

“You got to curl shots,” said Tim Klein, explaining how the stone you slide will curve or curl depending on how you let it go. “You’ve got to call shots, read the ice. There are a lot of different aspects to the game you have to master.”

At the Long Island Sports Hub in Syosset, there are a lot of masters of curling, and some beginners, too.

I tried it, and it wasn’t pretty. I slid the 40 pound stone about a tenth of the way down the 150 foot course, or sheet. It’s much harder than it looks.

Sweeping isn’t so easy either. You brush the ice to decrease the friction. It’s more aerobic than you might think.

There is a lot of strategy, history and tradition in the sport of curling. And drinking is a big part of that.

“The tradition is at the end of the game you shake hands, say good game, and the winner buys the loser a drink,” Klein told me. “Then the loser buys a winner a drink. And you sit and socialize.”

It’s something to think about during these hot days, if you’re longing for a cold one.

The government review of AT&T’s $85 billion takeover of Time Warner has reached an advanced stage, a significant milestone in a deal that was closely watched for signs of how the Trump administration would view large mergers. All images and written content is property of the listed RSS FEED if you would like more on this story and images please click the listed feed. http://www.wsj.com/xml/rss/3_7014.xml

In 2015, a video showing a semi-automatic handgun being fired from a custom-built drone went viral, raising concerns for authorities, including the FAA. The development of such a DIY device was only a matter of time, as was the commercialization of the technology. Now Florida-based startup Duke Robotics has unveiled the TIKAD, a custom-built quadcopter that can carry and fire various military weapons, including semi-automatic rifles and grenade launchers.